FPGA Replay Board

[mikej]

Hi,
A brief update. I've received a lot of PMs and emails asking for status, and I haven't got around to answering them all yet. I am working through my list sending out first a quote and then payment details just before the board ships. I have shipped another 5 today.

Everybody who emails me is in the offer queue. It's taking longer than I hoped as I have some bad regulator ICs which need to be replaced, and this takes some time per board.

Things will get faster shortly when I start to receive fully assembled boards directly from the factory, the hand finishing and testing takes forever.

Best,
MikeJ

[mikej]

Yes, it fits just fine in a mini-itx case.
You will need the atx psu controller board as well if you wish to turn on/off the internal supply.
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/itx_2.jpg

All the first batch have a hand written serial number :
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/common/replay_b02_back.jpg

will that do
/MikeJ

[mikej]

I believe the plan is still to use the freely available Poseidon stack which, IMHO, is bloody fantastic (I use it on my A4000) with the Deneb.

Correct, we have licensed the stack and Jakub has it running on the daughter board.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

A couple of questions

1. Is it possible to use a Scart/RGB cable with the arcade FPGA?

2. I know that some modern monitors have problems with Minimig because they don't go down to 50hz, and even if they do, sometimes the scrolling is far from perfect. As the A.FPGA has DVI out, if I connect DVI to HDMI (to a TV), will I get perfect scrolling everytime and of course 50hz support?

1 - yes, if you use a dvi to vga adapter you can use a standard minimig style Scart cable.

2 - If the TV supports 50Hz vertical then it will look fine. I am running it here with DVI to HDMI and it looks good, although the current shipping core does not have DVI enabled. I am working on this now.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

Loooong time lurker here. I have let Mike know I want 2 from the second batch (I want 1 for my desktop and 1 for my arcade cab)

I have 2 questions

1. I have a miracle keyboard that plugs into the Amiga's serial port, will the  replay have the option of adding a 25 pin serial port?

2. The bus on the ocs was 7mhz, aga 14mhz, are there any plans to increase the chip bus to say 21 or 28mhz?

1. It has a 9 pin serial on the back and enough io pins on the patch panel if you fancy wiring up and adapter. It also has two cable headers with more io pins where you can connect to an adapter (should one exist).

2. yup.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

Hey MikeJ any news =)

Got those regulators from customs yet? Thanks!

UPS have let me down - yet again. Apparently they tried to deliver on Tuesday, having not told me the parcel had been released from customs. They hadn't told the driver the door code. I got a letter today telling me this. Tomorrow is a holiday here, so I won't get it until Monday. grrr.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

Please send me an email.
Yes, shopping cart is going to happen.
I have boards everywhere at the moment, but I do have a bit of a backlog.
Unfortunately I am going back to China for a week which will delay shipping. I will go and see the factory and make sure more are on the way though, which is good.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

To : MikeJ
Subject: The Plan - it's working!

See, Mike, I told ya the reference to psychedelic imagery would get people interested!

People love the idea of getting a free trip. In these times of austerity people are looking for any cheap alternatives to the real thing!

Ha ha, we got em.
I was playing around with old school plasma affects you've seen in demos- but doing them directly in hi-res from VHDL at tv scan rate. You get some seriously headache inducing images on the 50" tv.

Oh, I just picked up a xilinx usb download cable I can use with the laptop when I travel - 20$ here! Got to love the Chinese.
/Mike

[mikej]

I'm back home. This morning I've replaced the regulators on 8 boards and all are fine.
Over the next few days I'll continue building and testing the remain boards.
I'll be in touch first with those of you I have already contacted but not taken money from, and then the next people on the list etc.

I've visited the factory in Shenzhen last week and they have started to source components for the next run.
/Mike

[mikej]

Sorry, I'll check - I though I had caught up with the email back log.
/Mike

[mikej]

The Replay board has quite careful routing on the SPI lines, and uses DMA to speed things up. It ramps the clock up to 28MHz I think, if the card supports it.
MikeJ

[mikej]

Yes, the ARM controller has all 4 bits routed to the SD card.
There are some license issues with using this mode however...
/MikeJ

[mikej]

Sorry, I have been trying to reply to everybody but until I have enough boards to ship I haven't got much to say. I am swamped at the moment.
Please be patient, I am testing and working through the list as fast as possible.
Best,
MikeJ

[mikej]

I have just received news that all the certification is in place.Now we can really start to ramp.
/MikeJ

[mikej]

i wrote you a pm here some months ago mikej, i never got a reply. still hoping to get one.

Hi, please send me an email, mikej_at_fpgaarcade_dot_com

I have to wait between sending a response to every PM on this site, it takes forever.
I wrote I would not be responding to PMs as a general rule.
/Mike

[mikej]

The daughterboard exists as layout in my laptop.
I'll post a piccy when it's completely done.
/MikeJ